Tips for lumber farming in WoW: Intermediate techniques (and transmog)

One of the more time-intensive aspects of Player Housing so far has been using our profession skills to craft unique decor, and if you’ve got an army of alts like me you’ve probably spent a decent amount of the past month flying around Azeroth in search of enough lumber to create two entire house-fulls of adornments.

Sure, we’ve been farming ore and herbs just like this for over 20 years, but there are enough new aspects and subtle ways to maximize your lumberjacking efficiency that we thought a short guide with some tips and tricks would be helpful. After you’ve acquired your first axe and familiarized yourself with the process, use this checklist to enhance your log-gathering sessions.

Pick your lumber farming spot carefully

It might sound counterintuitive, but don’t head to the most dense forests on Azeroth in order to farm lumber. Zones like Elwynn Forest get frustrating with their wide canopies and closely-spaced trees. Flying from one node to the next requires dodging branches or wasting Skyriding resources on gaining enough height to punch through the treetops between each node. I have much preferred to gather lumber in zones with widely spaced apart foliage like Westfall or catastrophically denuded plant life such as the Twilight Highlands.

There are various other guides with the best zones and even routes within those zones to optimize your wood gathering, but I find that personal preference tends to override any particular area. By all means try out places when you get a hot tip from a guildmate on wooded areas that are lumber-rich, but at this time the node distribution and sheer size of the open world means that you’ll end up with your own favorite spots to farm the lumber of each expansion.

One thing I can say without question is to avoid areas with multiple vertical levels. You will end up wasting a great deal of your time if you’re constantly flapping up and down the sheer cliffs and floating islands of Thaldrazus compared to the more flat and lumber harvesting-friendly Ohn’ahran Plains.

Develop a keen eye for golden axes

Just like the placement of herbs and ore tend to follow specific patterns, you’ll find lumber node locations follow a set of rules. Knowing what these rules are will help accelerate the process of landing, chopping, and soaring on to the next target.

Firstly, lumber nodes are not limited to spawning on living trees. You will see glowing golden axes appear on recently felled logs, burnt out stumps, and even mushrooms or other zone-specific growths. Don’t get hung up checking every side of the copse of trees that you’re near and miss the golden axe sticking out of the stump just behind you.

One other thing that I’ve noticed is that the placement of nodes on their respective trees tends to be on the most well-traveled side. You’ll rarely see a spot to harvest lumber on the face of a tree pointing towards a nearby cliff. Most nodes can be found on the road side near paths, as if there is a team of wagon-bound dwarves traveling the roads of Azeroth and marking lumber by tossing golden axes from their cart.

One general piece of advice is to try to spot the lumber node from the air before you land. When you’re close enough to touch down, if you don’t see a glowing golden axe, try to quickly circle around the immediate area while still in flight to save yourself galloping around on foot.

Consider the long (lumber) game

The most important thing to realize is that farming lumber itself is not a particularly engaging aspect of World of Warcraft. In the past, we have had the luxury of heading to the Auction House when we feel like skipping the last twenty veins of ore. With lumber being Warbound, we will need to chop down whatever we need ourselves.

Since gathering wood is not particularly mindpower-intensive, it is the perfect in-game activity to pair with another thing you like to do while sitting at your computer. Perhaps you’re behind on listening to your favorite podcast or you haven’t watched your favorite movie in a year or two. You might choose to farm lumber while knocking out some of the travel-heavy world-spanning content on your to-do list  — I am about four expansions behind on World PVP achievements, and it’s been a nice change of pace to be able to gather up lumber while Skyriding around several different continents.

To get into the fine details, I have found that being discerning when traveling is the way to go. If you make a detour for every node that pops up on the mini-map, you will meander and take quite a long time to reach your destination. A nice balance exists where you only land for promising nodes that are still in front of you and decently close to your line of travel.

I have also found that farming seems to be less of a chore when it is for something specific. It’s a lot easier to hit 50 Dragonpine Lumber when you know you’ll be adding a Thaldrazus Telescope to your roof-deck observatory than when you’re simply farming it for farming’s sake. Don’t forget to dump all of your lumber into your Warband Bank when logging off for easier crafting across all your alts.

Don’t forget to look the part!

As for which character you should be using to gather up your crafting materials, the resounding answer is Druid. Flight Form does not break while gathering lumber, so you can skip the mounting up cast after each tree visited and truly optimize your chopping sessions.

If you don’t have a Druid, then you’ll need to make sure you look the part. There are an abundance of options when putting together a stunning lumberjack transmog. Northrend Tailoring offers checked lumberjack shirts in several colors. Pick your favorite work pants, sturdy boots, and warm wool hat, and then finish the look with an appropriate axe. If your class doesn’t wield axes, get creative with alternatives that look like they could split a log or two, like the Chasmwrench Docking Hook stave.